Rude-a-begger

We have fallen into a bad habit that has then turned into a reputation of sorts. I am generally happy to have a reputation, it means someone is interested in me enough to talk about me. But I am the first to declare there is good "rep" and bad "rep" and out and out lying "rep". I propose to talk about the status we have achieved in this clan of ours that teeters on the verge of good/bad notoriety. It is that our family seems incapable of answering our "Ma Bell". It all started when we started growing pre-teens. The phone would ring incessantly the minute school got out and would last until the wee hours of evening. We had to start demanding no phone calls after 1o:oo p.m. (Can you believe kids would call after 1o:oo!) Any who, once these phone addicts starting using up all our air time, okay it is a land line, we found that along with talking teens came walking phones. We would find phones under beds, in dirty clothes basket, underneath the toilet, in the car, out front in the lawn chairs. There were days where the phone would give a distant hum and the whole house would be in an uproar searching for that tiny cricket sound that seemed to stop the minute we were remotely close to it! Let us not even discuss the issue of the batteries dying and so the locating button was all but incapacitated until one day the phone would showed up in the washer, in the refrigerator, or in a dresser drawer! After years of battling this prepubescent phone thingy we as parents put up the white flag. We just stopped. Stopped answering the phone because it was always "Is ______(take pick of child's name) there?" That was after running up and down 2 sets of stairs just to find the freaking thing! Like I said we just stopped answering. And now the phone can ring right in front of us and we seem not to even register that a sound was made. In a world where cell phones, iPhone, etc are an extension of ones' body, our phone barely receives any human contact. It is desperate for people touch. It is desperate to be used more then it's allotted hours. (okay it is still a landline.) But we don't answer and we get this ALL THE TIME: Phone rings and the machine comes on and the person calling leaves a message "I know your there. Pick up. Don't monitor this call." etc etc. We also hear more then not "Oh, that family doesn't ever pick up there phone." But I realized that it isn't a very grown up habit. Especially when my children are at the age of having their own phones! Will I have to say on their machines "I know your there.....it's mummy...pick up"? So we have made a committment to be grown ups and answer our ring-a-ling-lings. It's been hard. Like now , it's ringing. Oh well, that is what message machines are for. Maybe we will be grown ups starting tomorrow!